wait, you didn't hear? HD-DVD is currently at the best it can ever get forever and ever. Blu-Ray on the ther hand has the "POTENTIAL" to be able to improve by one gagillion times better than what it currently is. ;)

wow, it's pretty fun bashing these formats. now I see why it still goes on these days. :D

Oh, give me a break.

Your stance makes no sense whatsoever. If Warner, The Weinstein Company, Image, and Rhino can do it, then Paramount and Universal can do it too. They're not because they choose not to.

So I'll flip it back on you: on movies of similar length on a disc with the exact same capacity, why is it that you claim Universal is technically unable to do what other companies do on at least somewhat of a regular basis?

The answer, of course, is that you're taking your distaste for HD DVD and reaching for an illogical conclusion.

If Universal included lossless audio as a rule but didn't with King Kong, then that'd be something else entirely.

QuePaso is obviously a troll. People have been banned for less than that.

The reason most universal titles, IMHO, do not include lossless tracks, is because they prioritize the picture quality more then warner and paramount combined. Some of hd-dvd's top titles (riddick, fast furious tokyo drift, deer hunter, etc) all look superb and use very high bitrate to achieve it. So, in my eyes, they decided to forgo Lossless audio in favor of better PQ. I'd rather universal go to a format that has more space + bandwidth and can give us BOTH. Just my opinion. Unlike you, i dont claim my opinion as an absolute, i am just stating how i see it, and how so many other blu-ray fans do as well. Do not take this as a flame man, im a HD fan first and foremost, i just cannot fathom why people fight so hard for worse technology.

And if you look back, you claimed why Uni doesnt include Lossless is because there is no difference as fact, when we both do not know what is actually fact and speculating. Thats all.

You think The Deer Hunter is a top HD title? What? Did we watch the same disc?

My buddy has a XA2 and i've watched most of the HD-DVD exclusives at his house *shock and awe*. I thought it looked great. Same for riddick and the F&F titles.

I'm not arguing Riddick and F&F, but The Deer Hunter had terrible blacks and was overly soft. I can't imagine anyone watching that and saying, "Ah, now there is a good looking HD disc." And it also undermines your argument about Universal, since there's no way that transfer pushed the limits of the disc.

It looked great to me. Perhaps its your display? I watched it on a Sony Pearl and 120" screen.

I can not disagree with this more. First of all I can hear a major difference in DD+ and lossless. I can rarely see a difference in a Universal disc and a Warner disc of high visual quality. I would also say that my Universal discs are among my worst in PQ. Universal puts out a lot of crap in HD.

I found Deer Hunter's PQ to be so unacceptable that I sold it and kept my DVD. Pretty much any 70s release from Universal is a complete joke and is barely better than its DVD counterpart.

Universal has its head in its ass about lossless and it needs to figure this one out. HD DVD should be about the best in video and audio. I guess Universal's commitment to high picture quality is the reason 40 Year Old Virgin has so much damn edge enhancment in the picture.

Perhaps your eyes if you think that movie is better than most of the Warner and Paramount releases.

If that's what you're watching it on, you'd have to be legally blind to miss the glaring flaws in that transfer, which is one of Universal's worst. And I agree with Darkside that WB has put out plenty of excellent transfers, and many with lossless sound. To suggest it's a space issue preventing Universal from using lossless is just, well, wrong.

That is my opinion. I thought it looked great for how old it was. I'd never seen it before and thought it looked excellent. Not much more i can say. I thought one of the worst was Happy Feet, which had unbelievable banding in the underwater scenes that reminded me of the first Divx ripped DVD movies. Really bad stuff. I like universals stuff for the most part.

Deer Hunter is far from the best that Universal has put out, but I was still able to enjoy it projected on my 133" screen... looked very film-like. 40 Year Old Virgin is close to being the worst HD disc for PQ that I have, the EE as projected on the big screen is just atrocious.... not quite as bad on my smaller 47" display, but still not good at all.

So you think Deer Hunter looks great and Happy Feet looks awful? O...K.... -screwy-

Perhaps you should consider having your display calibrated. The banding in Happy Feet is incredibly minor.

Agreed. He may even be a paid schill for Sony. They ARE out there.

I don't know if this is really worth salvaging. Let's just go back to the "post about the format(s) you like and steer clear of anything you can't stomach" mindset.